


sic itur ad astra

by cheschi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 04:41:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7787185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheschi/pseuds/cheschi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>acta deos numquam mortallia fallunt—mortal actions never deceive the gods {ancient Latin proverb}</p><p>The roads that lead them to each other never converge, but fate ties them together in other ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sic itur ad astra

**Author's Note:**

> this is pretty rough so far and intentionally written as a short piece but this is basically set in a universe where a series of events never happened and how that shaped them never meeting (i.e. no quest for the avatar, etc.) 
> 
> let me know what you think!

Katara dreams of fire.

She dreams of ribbons of fire darting at her and herself ducking in and out of their path. She zigzags past trees, through alleyways, across cities, all to escape the red. Faster, her mind screams, darting past a dimly-lit sidewalk lamp. Her foot meets the cobblestone and splashes water onto the sidewalk as she weaves herself through the city in the rain.

She dreams of ashen skies raining down on her in the South instead of snow. The smoke coats her lungs with a searing heat, sticky, gray and her voice dies in her throat. The sky is so dark it looks like the start of time and the gates of hell burst open. A symphony of chaos greets her, metal landing on snow, footsteps trampling the ground, and in her peripheral she sees a little girl bursting out of tent.

And then she is part of the fire. She is at the very core of its burning, but she doesn't feel the danger, the rush to run. The flames lick her feet like a warm breeze, curling around her like a blanket. These flames burn softer, with less anger, but with the same intensity of a running river. The fire is gentle, like amber, like honey, and it feels like a memory.

Katara awakens with a jolt at the cry of penguins outside their igloo. The walls of their home stare back at her, cold, solid, strong and blue.

"Get up, sleepyhead," Sokka pokes his head into her room. The faint purple light from the dawn outside falls into her room. "Mom made breakfast already."

His hunting boots scratch the ice as he draws back the curtain separating her room and the rest of the igloo and moves to the side of the space. He looks distracted, absentmindedly running his hands over his well-worn fishing net.

"Mom's here?" Her brows furrow. She lets the blankets fall to the ground.

Her brother gives her a look before throwing his net over his shoulder, turning to step outside. "Of course she is. Where else would she be?"

"It's nothing, I just had some bad—

.

"Dreams? What kind of dreams?" Lu Ten smiles at his cousin with a shine in his eyes, gives him a knowing wink that holds a hidden side he didn't know his cousin could even have and in silence Zuko offers a prayer to Agni that he never has to hear what exactly went on in Earth Kingdom caverns and Fire Nation tea houses.

"Urgh—you wouldn't understand," Zuko makes a face at him and rolls his eyes, tossing a throw pillow at him. "Forget about it."

Despite the fact that he lags because of his leg to avoid the incoming, Lu Ten still manages to duck from the blow with ease. If only he could've avoided the arrow that well, the thought comes like quick and sharp and bitter, like a dagger.

Zuko doesn't know how he does it. Lu Ten is still the light in their dark family. Despite everything, despite the injury and the loss of birthright, his cousin can still sit patiently by the turtleducks as he tears them bread. Iroh gave up the throne for him when his cousin fell in battle and is considered the disgraced Dragon of the West amongst many circles that whisper it but never say it aloud, but he still looks at Lu Ten like being a father to him is the most important rank he has.

Zuko wouldn't know what that's like, even in a dream. So instead, what comes to him is dreams of winter.

He dreams of the cold, of a phantom pain on the left side of his face, of a jolt above the middle of his ribcage that feels too real to be nonexistent. He dreams of the cold winds beating at his face in contrast to the Caldera's eternal summer.

He dreams of dragging himself through miles of ice in the storm, pushing and pushing but never moving. Feet frosting, he summons the flames within him, but he finds that they have gone deaf from the wind's screams.

He dreams of cold at his fingertips, numbing him and hushing him in a way that the fires never could. His hand opens and closes around something small and cold, the ribbon of the pendant flying in the wind. And it's gone, pulled out of his hands until he is left grasping for thin air. Then it's the cold from metal of twin blades twirling in his hands, but the swords too clatter to the ground and someone tears off his mask until he is left with the chill that comes with aftermath.

Zuko dreams in shades of blue, and he is haunted by oceans of empty space.


End file.
